Designing Mobile Interfaces for
Novice and Low-Literate Users
Bill Thies
Microsoft Research India
Joint work with Indrani Medhi, Thomas Smyth, Emma Brunskill,
Kentaro Toyama, Ed Cutrell, Somani Patnaik, Latif Alam,
Satish Kumar, and Saman Amarasinghe
USID 2009
September 20, 2009
Mobile Phones in the Developing World
Population in Billion
6.7
1
3.5
3.2
World
Cell Phone Attained
Population
Users
Secondary
Education1
D. Bloom, Measuring Global Educational Progress, 2006
2 World
Bank, 2000
3.1
1.0
Live to Bank Account
Age 602
Holders
Usability Barriers
(Indrani Medhi)
• Conducted ethnographic observations of
125 people on traditional text-based
interfaces
• Navigation difficulties:
– Navigating hierarchical structures
– Mapping soft-keys
•
Input difficulties:
– Using scroll bars
– Using checkboxes
– Constructing SMS and USSD syntaxes
• Language difficulties:
– Specialized terms (e.g., transaction, jaundice)
do not translate to local language
In
Ph
Ke
RSA
Design Recommendations
Case 1: Text-Based UI
• Provide local language support (in both text and audio)
• Minimize hierarchical structures
• Avoid requiring non-numeric text
• Avoid menus that require scrolling
• Minimize soft-key mappings
Design Space
flexible
Free-form
speech
Input
method
Live Operator
Structured
speech
Typing
inflexible
Spoken Dialog
Text-Based
IVR
Forms, SMS, etc.
Interactive
Voice Response
Text
Audio
Output method
Graphical
UI
flexible
Graphics
[+ Audio]
Focus 1: Text vs. Spoken Dialog, Graphical UI
Task: transfer money to a peer
Participants: 58 non-literates (up to 6th standard), Bangalore
Text Based
Spoken Dialog
Task completion
0%
72%
Time taken
—
5 min
Help needed
—
4 prompts
Graphical UI
Rich multimedia
100% UI
(without text)
13 min
14 prompts
Conclusions:
• Non-text designs are strongly preferred over text-based designs
• While task-completion rates are better for rich multimedia UI,
speed is faster and less assistance is required on spoken-dialog system
Design Recommendations
Case 2: Rich Client UI
• Recommendation: graphical UI with spoken input?
flexible
Free-form
speech
Input
method
Live Operator
Structured
speech
Typing
inflexible
Spoken Dialog
Text-Based
IVR
Forms, SMS, etc.
Interactive
Voice Response
Text
Audio
Output method
Graphical
UI
flexible
Graphics
[+ Audio]
Focus 2: Text vs. Live Operator
Task: report patient health symptoms
Participants: 13 literate health workers and hospital staff, Gujarat
Append to current
SMS:
11. Patient’s Cough:
No Cough
Rare Cough
Mild Cough
Heavy Cough
Severe Cough
(with blood)
Error rate
Time taken
- Press 1
- Press 2
- Press 3
- Press 4
- Press 5
— printed cue card—
Text (Menus)
Text (SMS)
Live Operator
4.2%
4.5%
0.45%
1.7 min
1.6 min
2.3 min
Conclusions:
• Live operator interface is only one with sufficient accuracy for health data
• This model is also simple to adopt and cost-effective in India (call centers cheap)
• Results caused partner to switch upcoming TB program from text to operator
Design Recommendations
Case 3: Reporting Short Data
• Recommendation (in India): use a live operator
• Our proposition:
Operators are under-utilized for mobile data collection
• Benefits:
– Lowest error rate
– Less education and training needed
– Most flexible interface
• Challenges:
– Servicing multiple callers
Peer-to-Peer Media Sharing
(Thomas Smyth)
• If users are properly incentivized, they will overcome many
barriers
(slides abridged – more details to be published soon)
Enabling User-Generated Content
• User-Generated Content has come to define the Web
– Original attraction of the Web….everyone can be a publisher
– Now…Blogs, review sites, digital video, forums, news comments, …
– Empowers ordinary citizens with a voice + a global audience
“75% of all content on the Web is user-generated.”
— Reggie Bradford, CEO of Vitrue
“35% of U.S. Internet users have posted some sort of
user-generated content online.”
— Home Broadband Adoption 2006, Pew Internet & American Life Project
• How do you enable someone to generate content…
– With a low-end phone?
– With limited literacy?
– In their local language?
Promising avenue:
Leverage voice
Solution: An Audio Wiki
• Allow users to publish information:
– Using a phone rather than a computer
– Using voice rather than text
• Audio recording and playback,
but keypad-driven navigation
– Not attempting a dialogue-based system
recording,
playback
navigation
• Rich space of applications spanning citizen’s
journalism, political activism, dissemination of
agriculture & health information, ...
• Research challenge: making it usable
– Interactive voice response (IVR) typically frustrating
– Research: adaptive interfaces, audio linking, flexible playback
Rich Space of Emerging Services
• VoiKiosk / Spoken Web [IBM Research, ICTD 2009]
– 4 months;1,000 users; 20,000 calls
– Killer app: personal advertising
– Toll-free number
• Providing an audio frontend or analog to Twitter
–
–
–
–
TwitWoop
AudioBoo
TwitSay
TwitterFone
– MySay
– VoiceField
– TweetCall
– TweetMic
 But not a single one is available in India
• Opportunity to redefine the “browser” for audio content
Conclusions
Mobile phones have usability barriers
for novice and low-literate users
– Use voice and graphical interfaces
– Consider a call center when appropriate
• If users are properly incentivized,
they will overcome many barriers
– As evidenced by mobile video sharing
– Entertainment is a powerful motivator
Future opportunity in enabling usergenerated content for novice users
– Can voice services mirror the Internet?
– Key challenges for user interface designers